While smartphones have changed the way many people in the US access Internet-based services, "dumb" cell phones remain the dominant way that most people in the developing world (such as Africa) get access to Internet and cloud-based services. Many of those phones can run Java applications and browse the Web (or at least websites based on the Wireless Application Protocol), but they don’t have the power or bandwidth to support the kind of "apps" that Android and Apple iOS users are accustomed to.

The biNu home screen, running in a Java mobile phone emulator.

An Australian startup called biNu is aiming to change that by putting mobile apps in the cloud, and giving the users of cheap, dumb cell phones access to them through a local Java client. BiNu (named for the letters on phone keypads for 2, 4, 6, and 8) provides access to Facebook, Twitter, and Google search and translation, RSS news feeds, and a host of other Web-based applications localized into 16 languages (including Swahili, Arabic, Chinese and Hindi) through an Amazon-hosted virtual app. The company already has users in Africa, Malaysia, and Iran, as well as in the US, and claims to have had over 4.2 million unique users and 33 million user sessions this month.

The local Java app, which the company claims will run on "almost any phone," runs like any other mobile Java app and requires little in the way of local processing power. Users can download the application using a WAP browser or via SMS message. The client only handles the presentation of the data, painting the handset's screen with display information sent over a proprietary wireless data protocol—the actual graphics rendering work, as well as the computational power and Internet connectivity required for the apps to run within biNu, are run on a virtual application server in the Amazon cloud.

Anyone can build biNu applications using biNu's XML schema and host them on their own servers. Since all of the data processing happens on the server, biNu offers a great deal more security for mobile phone users—a big concern, especially in countries where SMS traffic and other data transiting wireless networks may not be very secure. And unlike most thin client computing platforms, biNu's wireless protocol is asynchronous—making it usable over 2G networks without significant lag and allowing the client to recover from dropped sessions more easily.

34 Reader Comments

Sounds like a vaguely interesting idea, but I'm wondering if there are any feature phones dumb enough to actually need this? My last feature phone was a Nokia 5530 a couple of years back, and of the apps these people actually show on their site, most of them were already there, without an OnLive-esque messing around. Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, Gmail, Opera Mobile, QR code readers, etc etc. Are there really phones that are dumb enough to need this service? Or is it that nobody is continuing to develop native or java apps for feature phones, despite the vast number of them out there?

Sounds like a vaguely interesting idea, but I'm wondering if there are any feature phones dumb enough to actually need this? My last feature phone was a Nokia 5530 a couple of years back, and of the apps these people actually show on their site, most of them were already there

The Nokia 5530 (XpressMusic) is a smartphone, not a feature phone, it's running Symbian.

As a side-note, Biniou (pronounced just like the name of this startup) is the name of a bagpipe-like musical instrument used in most of the Celtic world, and also slang for a (good old, wired, circular-dial) telephone in many of those regions. Esp. Brittany, where I hark from.

Sounds like a vaguely interesting idea, but I'm wondering if there are any feature phones dumb enough to actually need this? My last feature phone was a Nokia 5530 a couple of years back, and of the apps these people actually show on their site, most of them were already there

The Nokia 5530 (XpressMusic) is a smartphone, not a feature phone, it's running Symbian.

You can argue what is or isn't a smartphone (although the fact of running Symbian certainly doesn't make a phone a smartphone, Nokia only keep it around for feature phones now), but I could have made the same comment regarding my even older Sony Ericsson w810i, which I'm pretty sure is unarguably a feature phone. There are java apps for such phones covering the aforementioned areas, and I'm willing to bet they run a lot better locally that they would streaming the interface over a 2G connection.

The idea here is that it works over 2G at low bandwidth and constrained data plans. You can't get 3G or a smartphone in much of the developing world.

Yeah pretty much they're taking Opera Mini and putting it on steroids. So from what i'm grasping is that they're basically putting a client on your phone that shows a pre-rendered page. I can see the market for a product like this in 3rd world countries with bad signals. Basically its a remote control client.

They are still making phones for 2G networks in this modern day. I have friends that use them for just facebook. They put my old 3G WM6 phone to shame in terms of just facebook. So 3G really isn't the issue. Its getting the client to pick up the rendered image with the least amount of data required.

Sounds like a vaguely interesting idea, but I'm wondering if there are any feature phones dumb enough to actually need this? My last feature phone was a Nokia 5530 a couple of years back, and of the apps these people actually show on their site, most of them were already there

The Nokia 5530 (XpressMusic) is a smartphone, not a feature phone, it's running Symbian.

You can argue what is or isn't a smartphone (although the fact of running Symbian certainly doesn't make a phone a smartphone, Nokia only keep it around for feature phones now), but I could have made the same comment regarding my even older Sony Ericsson w810i, which I'm pretty sure is unarguably a feature phone. There are java apps for such phones covering the aforementioned areas, and I'm willing to bet they run a lot better locally that they would streaming the interface over a 2G connection.

Wrong, S60v5 & S^3 were & still are (they're still the bulk of Nokia's sales compared to WP) a smartphone OS for MANY of Nokia's models.Just because they're not big in North America, doesn't mean they're not smartphone OS's, dig up some of the articles at MyNokiaBlog or similar.S^3's built-in feature-set is still far greater than WP7x, & it's UX/stability/fluidity has improved greatly with Belle FP1/FP2.App compatibility was broken to a large extent with S^3, that's still building up but slowed hugely with the strategy change in Feb 2011, nevertheless it's built to a respectable amt for most typical users.The versions of Symbian for feature/dumbphones that you may be thinking of are S40 & S30, they're entirely different OS's.I'm by no means a huge fan of Symbian both past & present (it killed Nokia's true unpolished gem: Maemo/MeeGo) but even I know this.

Yea, it was somewhat ironic to see Nokia demoing a Symbian phone some years back with full keyboard/mouse and video out when people were barely rumbling about using Android or iOS as some kind of dockable pocket computer.

Per the article.. "The local Java app, which the company claims will run on "almost any phone,"" so I tried it out.

Having never used a 'feature phone' I was curious of the technology and it's application, perhaps I will find a smarter dumb phone and cross reference the marketing name with the model number before giving it a go next time, or just try it out, would take the same amount of time.

I'm interested in the related solutions and work on it for almost one year. But I called it lightweight OS mobile phone system including dump cell phone (or called feature phone) and basic smart phone. The intention for the solution is to reduce the precious HW resources, such as CPU computing capacity and RAM space consumed by advanced OS. In the ecosystem, a browser (with some native call functions) is a key component, acting as a middleware. Cloud OS/platform provides portal and management for the system. According to this mechanism, mobile phones can benefit from the cloud computing service and broadband network (WiFi or 3G+). This is very attractive for feature phone users to provide a smartphone consumer experience. Currently, we select 3G feature phone. The reason we do not look good at low-end dump phones, which are widely used in Africa, because the infrastructure network is very poor. People mostly adopt offline apps and text messages services. On the other hand, basic samrtp hone (main frequency <1Ghz, and RAM size < 512MB, OS: Android 2.3) is a good platform. Sure, we look good at the feature of HTML5 in this ecosystem, and believe it will bring a big change and opportunity for mobile industry.

Sean Gallagher / Sean is Ars Technica's IT Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.